DEMONSTRATION PLAY SCHOOL—HETHERINGTON, 68h 
round playgrounds to organize activities that are usually considered 
school functions. 
My own ideas! have been the product, first of reform-school work 
and then of intimate contact with the educational results of the lower 
schools through years of college teaching and experience in organizing 
play and recreation. 
While the essential elements in the theory of the play school— 
namely, the identification of play with spontaneous living, and edu- 
cation with the process of living, both controlled by social conditions 
and depending in results on leadership—are as sound for the organi- 
zation of secondary and higher education and even the molding of 
adult sentiments and customs as for the organization of the education 
of infants and children, yet this report is confined to the latter prob- 
lem, because it is fundamental to the rest and because the problems 
of organizing activities and leadership are quite different after the 
capacity to work has been established. 
B.—DIVISIONS OF THE REPORT. 
An interpretation of the general theory of the play school, a descrip- 
tion and explanation of its activities are given in divisions C and D, 
and conclusions concerning the demonstration of the summer of 1913 
are given in part two of this report [here omitted]. 
C.—INFLUENCES DETERMINING THE ORGANIZATION OF THE 
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. 
The school as a social institution and the school process, typified 
by the curriculum, require a perpetual reinterpretation and reorgani- 
zation corresponding to advancing knowledge of child nature on the 
one hand, and the demands of social progress on the other. Since 
the play school is a reinterpretation, it must be treated from both 
these standpoints. 
1. Cano Lire AND THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS. 
(a) THE CHILD’S SPONTANEITY AND PLAY. 
A larger interpretation of the child’s nature, especially in his play 
life, must be based on the fact that he is not merely a reflex mecha- 
nism responding to external stimuli, but a spontaneously active crea- 
ture, driven by internal needs and hungers that are fundamental 
springs of conduct. Hungering for activity, experience, and expres- 
_ 1T first formulated the play-school scheme as a school for subnormal children after two years’ work ina 
juvenile reformatory, and presented it in 1899 while a fellow in Clark University to G. Stanley Hall. Dr. 
Hall urged at that time the organization of such a school in Boston, but it could not be financed. Later I 
used the term “play school’ in my university extension of physical education and play in Missouri, especi- 
ally in the campaign for the organization of playgrounds under the school boards of rural towns with the 
hope of fusing the functions of the play center with the school. I left the University of Missouri before any 
part of the larger idea was realized. 
